Saints and Sinners
by C.Watherston
Summary: "Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future" A musing on River's past and Jayne's future.   Two parts. Rayne. 'T' just in case. R
1. Chapter 1

"_Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future" Oscar Wilde _

It had just been so damn easy. He did the job, he got paid; he got some trim, liquor and maybe a brawl. He had a bunk, semi-edible meals and his girls. Sure, he had to deal with Captain Tightpants and not being able to sex that floozy Kaylee, but he didn't mind. He shrugged it off and it was easy.

Then..._she _came.

His mama had taught him to be a God-fearing man, brought up a good Christian boy. But grace before dinners and prayers before bed didn't last long out in the Black. Not when he was killing a man a day just to stay alive and not when he was thieving and cheating just to have a little credit to send home. Nah, he was a sinner. Not the good man his mama drugg'd him up to be at all. He never gave much thought about going to Hell. So far, he'd seen plenny men die and there was nothin' in it that suggested to him that there was sommat waiting on the other end; just nothingness. Black. No more pain, no more hunger; but there weren't no purty angels or flames o' Hell. There was just...end.

Maybe that idea of it all just _ending _made it easier to keep doing what he did. Breaking the Ten Commandments became as religious, as mundane and repetive, as the priest's greeting. Almost second nature.

**You shall have no other gods before me.**

Ah hell, he didn't have time to pray to one God, never mind any other ones. **  
**

**You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.**

The second commandment went to shit the day he lost his virginity to Lacy Stevens in the back of his daddy's old truck, a balmy summers night when the sky was clear as spring waters. She'd been seventeen and heading off the college, and he'd been fifteen with the height and muscles of those fancy college Core boys she was off to drool over.

From the moment she'd showed him…_everything _he'd groveled at the altar of the female body. There was no sweeter surrender, no greater euphoria, than the shattering of boundaries and reservations in a good sexing.

**You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.**

He remembered the first time he took the Lord's name in vain and didn't get wacked upside of the head with his mama's wooden spoon for it. He'd cursed, jamming his fingers between a pair of boxes on the docks, and immediately, instinctively flinched. The other dockhands had looked at him strange but kept working. Nobody wanted to be caught looking slack and cop the blunt toe of the supervisors boot for it. So he'd shrugged and kept working; a sixteen year old boy from the Rim slaving for a living and a little something to send home at the end of the month.

'Sides; 'guiltless'? He weren't guiltless of nothing! He'd sinned till there was nothing left of his soul to save…at least, so he'd thought. By the time _she _came screaming into his world, he'd long since given up the illusion of righteousness and penitence. Yeah, he was crude and callous and uncivilized and a killer; but he was alive and he was more or less unbroken. He'd seen too many men; Malcolm Reynolds including, tumble into the abyss of darkness or suicide or drink because they'd stayed all honorable and just in a world that just weren't no more.

But then he met her. He got to know her. He fell for her hard like he'd never done 'fore. She made him wanna be a better man for the first time in his life.

**Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is** **within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.**

Nope, Number Four hadn't stuck around long neither. If he got a job, he took it, to hell with the day of the week. He hadn't stepped foot in a church since he left home. Out in the Black, time stopped meaning so much. It was a guide for their cargo drop offs, but other than that it faded to oblivion. **  
**

**Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.**

Ah, Number Five. Honor thy father and mother. Or die, pretty much.

The day he'd come in from the fields and found his old man with his hand up the cooks skirt, he'd stopped respecting the man. He'd thrown him out. Settling on the Rim was enough to turn any man mean; it was understood. But on the day his father had cheated his mother, the boy who had been beaten on every night the whiskey turned the veins on his face to a raised map, struck back.

Mama, he'd managed to keep respecting her. Honoring her as much as he could being the man he was. He sent her money, he reveled in the glow of her contact and went to the trouble of twisting his brain and brawny fist around the words and letters to write back. So maybe one out of the ten meant there was a part of him that he could save. **  
**

**You shall not murder.**

…or maybe not. **  
**

**You shall not commit adultery.**

Nope. **  
**

**You shall not steal.**

*snort*

**You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.**

Eighteen years old. The master of the docks the crew he was with was stationed at was a miser, a cheat and a bastard. So when the Purple-Bellies came around asking about somebody who'd been accused of raping a woman down the Red Light Alley, it hadn't taken much. Just a few words in their ears and the cumulative sum of what were in the crew's pockets at the time, and the master of docks was locked away. The boy from the Rim had been a hero for his plan. **  
**

**You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's."**

Stealing from your neighbours? The name of Canton ring any bells?

There'd been times before that too. Acquiring Vera from the fella's who came to kill him; what he hadn't mentioned to Mal was that the men had been from his ship, crewmates.

Then there'd been the saucy woman with the low, low top with the red as roses lips with fluttered her lashes at him and hadn't taken much in the way of convincing. Imagine his surprise when her husband came tearing through the door with a Remington shotgun and a temper like nothing this merc was going to stand up against!

Yeah. Jayne Cobb was a sinner. Once a sinner, always a sinner.

Unless there was salvation.

And for Jayne Cobb, salvation came from a saint who hadn't always been.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Reading this over, I do not believe it will be the final installment. Mostly because the...I believe the appropraite phrase would be that the 'plot bunny' made off with this one. Please Reveiw. Assistance desperately needed!**

"_Good morning angel" "Do not be silly, angel" "Come now, angel" "Sit down here with mother, angel" "Angel, don't do that" "You mustn't speak in front of daddy's guests, angel" _

Mother's little angel. Sit down, be seen, and do not be heard. Shiny, glittering people do not understand the girl. Just be smiling, polite, adorable, quiet, well-mannered.

"_Simon, what's an angel?" _

_Young Simon looked up from his desk and blinked in surprise. His little sister was sitting across from him, her chin propped on the edge of the expensive wooden desk, wide brown eyes serious and fixed on him; Simon, source of everything new and interesting, who did not scowl her for her questions unless he was busy with important business. She thought he might be busy with his 'important business' now, but he was looking at her, thinking about her question. _

_She felt her heart soar. Which was, of course, impossible, but there was a rush of endorphins that elicited a light-headed feeling of mild euphoria. _

"_Oh. Well, an angel is a messenger from God, and sometimes they're His warriors" _

"_Am I God's messenger?" _

"_God doesn't exist, _mei-mei_" _

"_What do you mean? I thought you said He had angels?" _

"_That's according to the Bible" _

"_What's the Bible?" _

"_It's the Christian holy book" _

"_Oh! A new book! Can I read it Simon? Can I?" _

_A look of panic crossed her beloved _gi-gi_'s face and he fiddled with something on his screen for a moment. _

"_Father says it's full of lies, River. You don't want to read a book of lies do you? Here, read my chemistry text" _

Book of Lies and she was the mythical messenger and warrior. She liked the idea of being a warrior; battling the hordes of barbaric Independents and saving the beacon of civilisation, hailed a heroine. Mother and Father would look on her adoringly and proudly proclaim to the empire that she, River Tam, was their only daughter and much loved. Simon would smile and carry her on his shoulders.

Innocent and pure; like Joan of Arc, an unblemished warrior. Fierce and strong and lily white.

Then she discovered what war really meant.

Blood and violence and death and statistics that made her want to vomit. Millions of lives; just _ended. _Gone. Finished. She did not want to be a warrior. She would be a dancer.

Innocent and pure, chasing perfection in every graceful, arching motion and sweeping curvature. Exact. Without flaw. Dissolving into the music. Becoming something other than River Tam, who was constantly frowned at, nasty thoughts and pursed lips. Not accepted. Too smart, too inquisitive, too blunt and passive of the unwritten social coda that her parents worshipped in place of any religion or meaningful pursuit.

When they cut her, they blackened her, made her dirty, blemished the lily, and polluted the River. The trickle of intuition became a torrent and the ballerina was lost in the flood waters and drowned in Miranda and secrets and blackness and hate and _secrets. _War. Plans.

Simon. He held her. Protected her. Grasped her face while the tidal waves of new minds, thoughts, hates, passions, memories washed her, drowned her. Echoed so loud she could not make sense of any of it. Simon held her on his shoulders but he could not keep her out of the black acid of lies and secrets.

Then, the Ape-Man. The Man-with-the-girls name intrigued her. He did not like her, or Simon, because they disturbed his peace. Which was ironic...because it was in the presence of Jayne that River found a moment of silence. He saw the world in black and white. It was refreshing, but also as shocking as the first lungful of crisp, cold air after being submerged for too long. Those brief, startling gasps of air kept her alive.

Then Ariel. He understood. Laying there, sharing her secrets with Simon, the secret she could not verbalise because all her words echoed too loudly, she felt his mind as he finally understood. Then, it was like a long, beautiful, summery and sustained lungful of sweet air. Jayne would protect her. Nobody else was allowed to hurt the girl...except Jayne. Because, after all, he was Jayne.

The River was slowly being cleansed.

But it needed to be purged.

Miranda had to go.

She was not a saint. She was a being, as bewildering and unfathomable as the musings of a divine being. Yet she was the first thing that Malcolm Reynolds, the man with no faith, had ever believed in since his God had forsaken him. She brought about a shift in balance so profound the universe was continuing to reel. She brought an entirely different force into wondrous being; Simon and Kaylee made a rainbow when they clashed. Kaylee's sun and Simon's rain. It was beautiful.

Then there was Jayne Cobb. The Moonbrained girl found something inside the Merc that not even he had realised was in there; a love so deep it changed the course of a River.

He was not a saint. But neither was she.

She was a girl. Just a girl. With a past as twisted and black as the guts of a rodent.

And he...well. He was merc.

But he was her merc.


End file.
